The Full Frame

I see this confusion a lot on the internet. Most people new to the high density storage game end up buying a chassis or controller that uses a SFF-8087 cord and they assume that they are all the same.

SFF-8087 is not backwards compatible between planes and controllers and drives. You cannot just flip a breakout cable and expect it to work in the opposite direction.

Several different flavors of SFF-8087:

Forward Breakout = crossover = SFF-8087 (Controller card) to 4x SAS/SATA ports on DRIVES

Reverse Breakout = 1:1 = SATA/SAS Ports (on Motherboard or controller) to SFF-8087 backplane

So if you have a LSI 9211-8i HBA (2x SFF8087) and want to connect to 4 SATA drives you just bought, then you need a SFF-8087 (Forward Breakout / “crossover”) cable.

If you have a Motherboard and want to make use of a hotswap bay, much like that in the Norco 4220 chassis. Then you need a “Reverse Breakout” or “1:1” or “Straight Through” cable.

Hopefully this clears up some confusion.

Word is that Hulu, the popular free video streaming site that delivers juicy syndicated goodness to millions of viewers daily, will likely switch over to a paid-only subscription service in 2010. Dates are unclear at this point but Hulu’s partner’s (News Corp.) exec Robert Murdock states:

“Are we looking at it with a view of adding subscription services in there and pay-per-view movies? Yes, we are looking at that. No decision has been taken yet.”

My personal favorite shows include: Family Guy, American Dad, King of the Hill, Simpsons, Naruto and a handful of others. Currently Hulu will only air these series’ past half-dozen or so episodes which really makes Hulu a bit boring for me after a while. I can remember in 2007 when Hulu didn’t have either the ads that currently plague every episode or the episode restriction that is currently in effect. After a while everyone saw the ads coming, but does Hulu really expect people to pony up a probable $10+ a month for something that will likely still have ads and likely still have episode restrictions? They should take a clue from the media distribution currently used by Microsoft’s Zune where a user pays $14.99 a month for unlimited, unrestricted access to every song on the planet, and every month you get to download 10 songs and keep them without DRM (digital rights management). That my friends is value. It’s a wonder why more people that actually like music don’t own Zunes. Hulu, get a clue, bait and switch won’t work on this generation when we can BitTorrent an entire season in hours or netflix and copy virtually anything we want INCLUDING movies.

What do you think?

I came across Ken Rockwell’s site looking for reviews of a Zeiss 50mm 1.4 that I was contemplating buying and stumbled again upon his article explaining the “Seven Levels of Photographers,” a pretty clever satire that’s roughly a cross between the Buddhist cycles of reincarnation and Dante’s Inferno’s seven circles of hell. Rockwell encourages photographers to focus on creating pictures instead of focusing primarily on what type of equipment they have.

After reading the article, I had a bit of fun reminiscing of my progress through the “seven levels.”

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/7.htm

My past mentor, National Geographic photographer Don Doll S.J., used to tell me exactly the same thing in as many words.

Showing up with the 70-200mm 2.8 IS USM  or a 50mm 1.0L or a Leica won’t make you a better photographer if you don’t know what to do with them and if you aren’t creative.

Granted I, like many people, didn’t start out as a splendid photographer (continue reading…)

Today marks the launch of my public sister site to this page, ResearchOrders.com. My goal with creating this page was to give people in the research field a place to network and ask questions without fear of their information being used for information mining from a site like facebook.com.

I have noticed the lack of sites for research networking on the internet. This really puzzles me as Research is a strongly collaborative endeavor and, many times, hinges on your social alliances.

Most of my personal content will continue to be posted here and it will be either linked to or copy-pasted into my forum.

Please pass this information on to anyone interested you may know.

http://www.researchorders.com

Today was a cold rainy day. I received little sleep last night and casually my mind wanders to that blissful state between waking and dreaming. As I sit in my office I know that any second the spotlight will fall upon me.

When a person goes to the doctor they expect knowledge, leadership, passion. I am confident in myself, and I know the reason they come back is because they are confident in me also. Nevertheless, for that split second before I round the corner into the waiting room my stomach knots, my pulse quickens and the fear of failure looms overhead. As I come fully into the waiting room with the gentle roar of some right-wing talking-head on the tv and the sweet smell of coffee lingering, my eyes lock on to theirs and I can’t help but smile.

This is my passion.